April 2009 - Posts
This is the final part of my three part series on integration between Patron Edge and The Raiser's Edge. In this part, I'm going to go over one of the things that all organizations battle with, regardless of the CRM application used - duplicate records .
Once your database has been around for a while, duplicates start to become a frequent concern. There are two ways to deal with duplicates: preventing them and merging them.
Prevention - The best way to deal with dupes is to keep them from ever getting into the system. It takes more effort upfront but pays off in the long run with less ongoing data cleanup. Prevention requires a two-pronged approach using the features of the software and changes to your business rules.
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Software-enforced rules
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In Raiser's Edge you can define
duplicate criteria to prevent duplicate constituents. Use Last Name, First Name and five digits of the ZIP. You can add more criteria, but remember that the more criteria you add, the less likely you are to catch potential dupes when adding a record.
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In Patron Edge, define
Duplication Conditions. Use Last Name, First Name and Email. Frequently this is all you can capture about someone on sign-up sheets or the web. Patron Edge can't do partial field matching, so don't use ZIP code here. However, Raiser's Edge can't match on email address so we take advantage of the PE feature.
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Patron Edge Online is a different animal altogether because there's not a live person between the system and the patron. You can prevent dupes with a couple of Company settings. If you use the feature, remember the impact on the patron. If I get a popup when buying tickets online that says I already exist, but I don't know what email I used when signing up, I can't log in to use my account and I can't finish the sale as a new person. Catch-22. I either call the box office or give up on the purchase. I'm not saying to avoid the Patron Edge Online dupe prevention feature, just think carefully before implementing it.
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Business rules
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Choose a system of record, either RE or PE. Of course you can enter most data through either system, but when you're dealing with important donors/patrons, make a habit of working on those records from one side as much as possible.
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Restrict access to add/edit records to those who truly need access. For folks who aren't trained on a system, only allow read access.
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Train users to always search before creating a new record, and enforce the rule by auditing who is creating duplicate records.
Merging - Some dupes still slipped through, now what? In an integrated system, we use a special merge function that hopefully makes this easy for you. It does remove the move tab features of Raiser's Edge and forces you to only keep one record; we chose to do this in order to keep the data properly synched. The positive side of this rule though is that you can merge in batches. Set your duplication criteria in Raiser's Edge and run the merge from Administration, and you can merge lots of dupes at the same time instead of going one by one.
And that's the final installment of PE/RE best practices. If you got something out of it, leave a comment to let me know and I'll do more of these in the future.
This is the second part of my three part series on integration between Patron
Edge and The Raiser's Edge. Today, let's look at some common issues and best
practices with the integration of memberships.
Membership gift information: In Patron Edge, a membership is
seen as something of monetary value that can include benefits for the
cardholder. In The Raiser's Edge, a membership is frequently seen as a giving
club or form of recognition. Because of this difference, Patron Edge does not
assume that a membership should have a gift associated with it. If your
organization requires a gift for memberships in The Raiser's Edge, you can set
the system up to automatically create gifts when a membership is added.
Membership expiration: Since memberships in The Raiser's
Edge are pretty much a giving club with a little bit of reminder functionality,
it's not really important to a lot of development offices if two membership
periods overlap. In Patron Edge, this is a big no-no because of the benefits
that can be associated with memberships. If Bob Hernandez has a membership that
doesn't expire until June and he does an early renewal in April, make sure that
the start date for the new membership is for the day after the current
membership ends. Otherwise Bob, who normally comes to the zoo once a week with
two free tickets as a member benefit, now gets four free tickets since he
technically has two active memberships. If you enter memberships in PE,
it will start the new one automatically after the current one. In RE, there's a
rule in Configuration, Business Rules that will set new memberships to
automatically start at the end of the current period; turn this on to save time
and headache!
What practices are you following to ensure a successful membership
integration? Leave a note in the comments.
I've gotten some requests to write more about integration between Patron Edge and The Raiser's Edge, so today I'm starting a three-part series on ways to get the most out of your integration while minimizing the amount of cleanup and management needed. Let's start with some ideas for handling constituent/CRM records.
Code tables: Ensure your code tables in The Raiser's Edge are spotless before integrating with Patron Edge. The ones to pay most attention to are Address Types, States, Solicit Codes, Titles and Suffixes. PE is great at ticketing, but doesn't have some of the advanced CRM features of RE (like global change), so you'll want to take care of this ahead of time.
Addresses: The Raiser's Edge allows a constituent to have multiple addresses of the same type, while Patron Edge enforces a rule that only one address is allowed per Address Type. For example, make sure your constituents in RE don't have more than one Home address; only the first one on the record will sync with Patron Edge.
Phones: The same thing goes here as with Address Types, but with more flexibility. The Raiser's Edge makes phone types a child of addresses, while Patron Edge makes it a child of the main CRM record. The Integration Control program lets you choose which RE address type to sync phone numbers with, but think about the implications of this. If you have a Home address in RE and you choose to sync Mobile phone with Home, keep in mind that if Mobile is also a phone type on the Work address in RE with a different phone number, it does not sync. In this case, consider being specific with your phone types, like Personal Mobile and Work Mobile, so that you can sync both and have them live on the desired address.
Deceased flag: Patron Edge doesn't have the concept of 'deceased', so if this information is important to your box office/guest services folks, consider globally adding it in The Raiser's Edge as a constituent code. Globally adding and deleting things in RE is so easy and you can base it on a query. Using it as a constituent code/client type allows you to mark people deceased in both directions as well, because you can use the Query module in RE to round up folks with that constituent code and then globally mark them deceased. Now you can take full advantage in RE of the Deceased features in Mail, Reports and Export.
What is your process for dealing with addresses or deceased clients? Share your tips in the comments.
This is a guest post by Michael Culler. Michael is the Managing Consultant for Blackbaud's Arts and Cultural consulting practice.
Given the current economy, overall decline in attendance and the competitive landscape for patrons and supporters of arts organizations, every organization must consider diversification in brand awareness, funding and underwriting – even around what is printed on tickets or done with a ripped ticket.
From corporate messaging on tickets where the sponsor gains passive access to potential consumers, to cross-marketing with “like-minded” organizations, the relationship with the patron or supporter has an opportunity to deepen. By building an intrinsic value into the ticket, you benefit as patrons take more than a “one and done” attitude towards their relationship with you.
With corporate sponsorship via a physical ticket, it's a win for both parties; the corporation gains access to a new customer base through brand awareness, and still has an opportunity to demonstrate its softer, more philanthropic side. You benefit by lowering the overall cost of the show, but more importantly you have an opportunity to maintain a level of affordability for the patron or guest by keeping ticket costs lower.
One way to build intrinsic value into a ticket is to offer the patron a discount on a future transaction, such as a subscription or a single ticket sale. Additionally the ticket number could be used as a promotional code to be used online, or as part of a larger raffle at the end of show run or season.
The relationship via the ticket could extend to certain conveniences or future benefits outside of your organization. It could serve as a discount for parking at the next show, for dinner at a local restaurant or as part of a larger discount cross-marketing plan between you and another organization.
Cultural organizations should consider building a culture with their patrons that makes it bad form to throw out a ticket.